When performing firmware updates of the local service processor using fwupdate in automatic mode, fwupdate will automatically use the Host-to-ILOM interconnect, if enabled. However, due to an issue with Oracle ILOM (fixed in bug 25042438), using the fwupdate command to update x86 or SPARC system firmware (including Oracle ILOM, OBP, BIOS, SYSFW, etc.) or a SPARC fallback boot image might take a long time or fail. This is because the Host-to-ILOM interconnect (the fastest connection) might not work reliability due to the Oracle ILOM issue.
As a result, the update process might fall back to the slower KCS/BMC interface when trying to update x86 system firmware (including Oracle ILOM and BIOS). Or, it might fail when trying to update SPARC system firmware (including Oracle ILOM, OBP, SYSFW, etc.) and fallback boot images, as slower KCS/BMC is not supported.
This issue can be seen on systems with versions of Oracle ILOM 3.2.8 and earlier. This behavior is intermittent and does not affect the reliability of the transfer, only which path is used to access Oracle ILOM.
If you are using Oracle Hardware Management Pack version 2.4.0.0 or later with a version of Oracle ILOM that has the fix for bug 25042438, you will not see this issue. Prior versions of Oracle Hardware Management Pack might still exhibit this intermittent behavior even if Oracle ILOM has the fix.
Workaround
To work around this issue and use the faster interface, you can target the Host-to-ILOM interconnect directly using the –H and –U options in fwupdate. For example, to update system firmware on an x86 or SPARC system:
# fwupdate update sysfw -x metadata.xml -H 169.254.182.76 -U root
Where 169.254.182.76 is the IP address for the Oracle ILOM port of the Host-to-ILOM interconnect and root is the root user.